Rename the "HTML" editor tab to "Text"

Description

This would reflect the "HTML" editor's purpose a lot better. Calling it "HTML Editor" is wrong as it doesn't really allow editing all of the html code. It allows editing the post content in "text" mode where html tags can be used.

Generally the Visual editor can be compared to MS Word or OO Writer, and the "HTML" editor to Notepad or TextEdit. In the Visual editor the final html code is generated in the background by TinyMCE and the browser. In the "HTML" editor the final html code is generated by wpautop().

The "HTML" editor has the following features:

Converts blocks of text separated by two consecutive line breaks to html paragraphs. This allows the user to type in exactly the same way as in any plain text editor and have their content shown properly after publishing.

Trims spacing and line breaks around html tags so the blocks of text flow naturally.

Has a toolbar with buttons for quick entry of common html tags (Quicktags).

These features make it a nice "Text" editor and a good alternative to the Visual editor especially for quick posts that don't need much formatting. However calling it "HTML" editor misleads the users that are familiar with html coding. These users expect to have access to all of the underlying html code which is not the case in the "HTML" editor.

In short: changing the name to "Text" would reflect how that editor works much better and won't mislead users that try to code html by hand.

Change History (26)

We have discussed this before and said we'd put it up for feedback in 3.5. I'm very much in favor of this label change, because then we can (theoretically) say goodbye to the "Why does WordPress eat my HTML" question that is forever being asked by people who like to add lots of extra line breaks and such. +1 from the ux corner.

Out of curiosity, how easy would it be for our API to be extended to allow a "third" editor implemented by a plugin called "HTML"? How much does our existing editor and DFW code rely on "html" as the name of the editor?

At the moment it's pretty easy to add another editor tab. Could be a bit tricky to have it set as the default when the editor loads, but can be handled by some jQuery.

The problem is with filtering the content between TinyMCE, the current textarea content and the new tab (assuming the new tab will use the same textarea).

On the other hand there's a function in TinyMCE to display the underlying html code in a (large) popup. That gives access the the "full" html code without messing with the JS autop and filtering. It's very easy to enable, a plugin would only need to add 'code' to the buttons. Was even thinking to add that by default to the second toolbar row in TinyMCE.

I would suggest to use the _x() Funktion for that string as 'text' is not a special term and some translators might not be aware of translation text properly to also fit it in the context of the editor.

I would suggest to use the _x() Funktion for that string as 'text' is not a special term and some translators might not be aware of translation text properly to also fit it in the context of the editor.